


fanaticism

by rubyjean_jacket



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Religious Guilt, historically inaccurate but you knew that already, or pretty close
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:48:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29790111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyjean_jacket/pseuds/rubyjean_jacket
Summary: "Fanaticism is redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." (George Santayana)Nicolo tries desperately to hold to the shattered fragments of belief after his life ends for the first time in Jerusalem.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first work in this fandom. I'm excited to get in on everyone's favourite meet-ugly.
> 
> As a note: I am doing some very surface level googling and using that as the majority of my research going into this. I would love to spend hours planning and checking and making sure everything is historically accurate, but I just can't see that happening right now, what with mental health and school and all that.
> 
> Also, also: this work is heavy on religion, because Crusades. I am trying my best to be accurate and sensitive, so please tell me if there's something that rubs you the wrong way and I can work to fix it. That being said, there is a lot of Nicolo being intolerant and unstable and just generally trying to cope with himself through the lens of the Catholic Church at that time, so please watch out for that.

Somewhere between the second and third body, Nicolo’s inner thoughts change from _Lord, guide my sword, make me holy, make me strong,_ into _I am the Lord’s sword, I am strong, I am holy._ He cleaves another man in half and is baptised in blood, reborn in the death of another.

They have taken Dorylaeum.

Later, as Nicolo cleans his longsword and scrubs his mail, he hears the celebration of the soldiers around him. He hears the revelry, the violent vindication, the drinking, the looting, the shouting. He doesn’t join; he is different. The rhythm of stone against steel does little to calm the fire lighting inside him, the adrenaline of battle keeping his blood hot and angry. 

His rage sustains him through the long, bright days, through the sand, through the difficult siege of Antioch. His righteous fury carries him all the way to Jerusalem. He doesn’t remember the names of those in his company or even recognize their faces; he has forgotten all but the seething anger within his skin, the anger that _God has given him,_ that the Pope himself had charged Nicolo with. When he sleeps, Nicolo dreams of fire, bright against the night sky of his eyelids. He kneels before a priest and begs for forgiveness, for purification. The priest nods, and passes him a torch. When Nicolo grabs it, his whole body is set alight, afire with the strength and power of God. Nicolo is powerful. Nicolo is divine. God has made it so.

Jerusalem shines.

The siege is brutal. The Christian quarter has been emptied and the wells have been poisoned, and soldiers are on the walls every hour of every day, even for prayers. It is a difficult assault, one that requires planning and strategy. Nicolo is not privy to these things, nor does he bother himself with it. God has called on him to purge this land. If it were up to him, Nicolo would throw himself at the city. It would come crashing down and the infidels would fall at his feet, unable to withstand the holy wrath of the one true God.

Finally, the order comes. It is gory and glorious. Nicolo’s sword gleams with godliness. It never misses its mark. Nicolo is blessed with violence and rage and divinity. 

Nicolo doesn’t ever breach the city. His company wages war on the sandy plains, which grow red beneath his feet. The very earth thirsts for the blood, soaking and swallowing it up. God is pleased.

Nicolo cuts down another man. This one he catches on the shoulder, and slices across the stomach as the man stumbles. He falls onto his own innards.

A blow comes from behind, striking him hard on the plate covering his back. It’s a slash, not a stab, which is a fatal error. The attacker has winded him — pissed him off — but not killed him. Nicolo turns, locks eyes with the infidel, and thrusts his own sword. The steel pierces the boiled leather easily, and Nicolo holds his gaze with the man’s dark eyes, watching the light burn out. Then the man crumples and Nicolo yanks his sword out. The moment is over.

Battle ends. Night falls. Jerusalem, its streets slick with blood, is still. Undoubtedly, there are festivities going on somewhere, but Nicolo finds his corner of the city quiet. His company — what’s left of it — is honouring their many fallen; they buried them before nightfall, and the night is full of prayer and penitence for all but Nicolo. He is perfect; he has been forged in the heat of battle and has served God well. 

Off in the distance, something catches fire. Sitting by a fountain, Nicolo feels an ache within himself. He turns, to tell his partner — still pale from the bloodlust and loss — how he wishes to be the one refining the city, and receives a dagger to the throat. As he chokes, his eyes meet those of his attacker: dark, cold eyes. 

Nicolo closes his eyes and waits for God to take him home.

He wakes, instead, cold on the sand, beside the crumpled corpse of his partner. The night is still dark, though the moon has risen to its highest point and is very nearly full. Nicolo can see a man sitting at the fountain, framed in its cool, dim light.

Quietly, Nicolo attempts to stand. It’s a feat, to be stealthy in chain mail and armour, but the man doesn’t move and Nicolo manages to get his footing. As he draws his knife, Nicolo realizes that he’s bathed in blood and must therefore be injured and should act fast. He plunges the knife through the back of the man’s neck. He splutters, coughs, falls.

The man is still.

Satisfied, Nicolo begins to look for the wound. He starts at his throat, which is where he should be injured, and finds nothing but blood. There are no cuts on his chest. He is perfect. 

The fire wells up within him again. Nicolo was dead, and now he is not. 

There is no time to process the thought, because Nicolo feels a sharp pain in his ribs. A blade pokes out from through his chainmail, and Nicolo dies.

It doesn’t last. Death has no hold on him, just as Christ on the cross. His Father will not permit any man to kill him, for he is the Saviour of mankind, here to preach repentance and the fear of God.

Nicolo wakes, and is immediately met with that same dark gaze. Without missing a beat, Nicolo lunges toward the man, twisting his arm back until something within gives and there’s a sharp snap. The man cries out and falls back, tears in his eyes. Nicolo draws his sword to send this stupid man to Hell, and watches in horror as the twisted appendage reforms and straightens. He crosses himself once, twice, and stammers out a plea to God.

The man groans and looks at him again. Nicolo looks, really looks, and sees the man outside Jerusalem, on the plains. He sees the man again at the fountain. He has killed this man twice already.

Nicolo has been away from home for years. He has seen men killed, tortured, starved, dry up in the desert. He has killed and tortured. And nothing has shaken him like this Eastern devil, who will not die.

They trade a few more blows. The man dies twice more, Nicolo once. When he wakes the last time, it is with an exhaustion beyond any he has ever felt. Still, he reaches for his blade once more. He must serve God.

The man, _the infidel, the heathen, the sinner,_ sighs then, and slumps back against the fountain. The moon has sunk lower; in the hours they have spent dying, the night is dying, too. The man says something, something tired and resigned and full of pain. Nicolo doesn’t understand the words, but he knows the meaning. He drops his sword.

“You are right. There’s no point,” Nicolo says, fighting the urge to weep. He allows himself to collapse onto the cool stone of the fountain, a wary distance from the man.

_Why would God do this?_

Dawn grows closer. Nicolo smells the smoke on the wind and knows that Jerusalem is being purified. Given the purity that was promised him. He prays to God for strength, and leaves the fountain.

Nicolo leaves the city. Behind him, Jerusalem burns. The fire inside him flickers.

He treks for a day and a half before he realizes he’s not alone.

It’s the man from Jerusalem, following him from a fair distance. Nicolo waits until the wind picks up to flank the man and attack from behind. This time, Nicolo puts all his rage into one downward stroke and severs the man’s head from his body. At the very least, it buys Nicolo time to put more distance between them.

Nicolo doesn’t see the man for days. 

He’s beginning to think that the death has stuck. 

It hasn’t. After a week, the man shoots him between the eyes with a crossbow and overtakes him while Nicolo is dead. When Nicolo wakes, the man is lighting a fire, and the sun is beginning to disappear.

“Fuck you,” Nicolo says conversationally, wiping the blood from his face.

The man, predictably, doesn’t reply. The fire crackles merrily. Nicolo feels sick. He lurches to his feet, still unsteady, grabs his sword and starts to walk away.

The man grabs the back of his mail and pulls. Nicolo swings blindly backwards with his sword with very little success. The man drags him back towards the fire. Nicolo relaxes, drops his sword, and throws himself into the flames. The iron grip the other man has on Nicolo’s collar means he is pulled into the campfire, too, and the two men wrestle with each other, screaming in pain as the fire licks hungrily at them.

Nicolo dies, and the man pulls him out, his words angry and clipped and most definitely cursing Nicolo.

Clothes smouldering, the men glare at each other.

Finally, the man speaks, but not in the language Nicolo had been expecting. “What is your name?” he asks, in smooth Greek.

Nicolo almost doesn’t answer. What right does this man have to his life, when he is a sinner and a heathen and unclean in every sense of the word? Nicolo is a holy warrior; this man is an infidel. But loneliness and confusion and exhaustion wear him out, and he replies, “Nicolo.”

“I am Yusuf,” the man replies. He begins to unpack food and some supplies from a nearby bag. Nicolo begins to feel his hunger awaken; he hasn’t taken much time to eat in the past weeks, too concerned with outrunning the man from Jerusalem.

Yusuf must know this, because he offers a small loaf of dark bread to Nicolo. “You must eat,” he says when Nicolo balks, far kinder than Nicolo feels is expected or deserved. “Killing you is a pointless endeavour, and one I am beginning to tire of.”

It throws Nicolo, the easy cadence of the words, the formal structure of the sentences. Yusuf is unclean, uncultured, an infidel. And yet he speaks with the confidence of a king or scholar. Nicolo searches within himself for that fury, for even a spark of his righteous bonfire, but finds himself empty — he is full of smoke and soot and sickness, and when he calls, he no longer hears the voice of God.

Nicolo eats the bread.

Yusuf asks, “Where are you headed to?” and it finally dawns on Nicolo that he has no plan, that he’s been running as fast as he could, not to get somewhere, but to get away from Jerusalem. Beyond that, he has no goal; Genoa is years and a boat ride away, and he has left the army. He is alone, save for Yusuf, and he cannot begin to depend on him. 

“I must find a holy man,” Nicolo says instead, staring into the campfire. “The Pope. He will have answers.”

Yusuf laughs. “The answer seems very clear to me.”

Nicolo debates smashing Yusuf’s head in with a rock. There would be a sort of sick satisfaction in it, albeit dulled by the knowledge that it would do absolutely fucking nothing.

“Allah says it is not your time yet,” Yusuf continues, blind to the anger building inside Nicolo, “and who am I to argue with Allah?”

Nicolo imagines how Yusuf’s blood would look in the firelight.

“I am going home. To Cairo.”

Nicolo finds his voice at last. “Then why,” he asks, slow and unsteady as he flounders through a language he hasn’t spoken in years, “do you insist on following me?”

“Because this is the road to Cairo,” Yusuf says, breaking into a smile. “You set off this direction, and I knew it was Allah’s doing. You and me, Nicolo, we are not meant to be alone.”

This is too much. Nicolo stands carefully, aware of the weight of his blackened armour, and steps away from the campfire until there’s a couple steps between him and Yusuf. Sword in hand, Nicolo curls into an uncomfortable chain-mail ball and allows himself to drift to sleep, comforted by the fact that he’ll sleep uneasily, able to wake if Yusuf attacks.


	2. Chapter 2

Nicolo wakes to the rustling of fabric and the quiet exertion of Yusuf pulling himself to his feet. In the pre-dawn haze, Nicolo can make out Yusuf’s movements but cannot decipher them. Though Yusuf doesn’t move towards him, Nicolo keeps his gaze fixed on him, waiting for Yusuf to strike. He’s saying something, too — something that feels worn with repetition — but Nicolo’s heart is hammering loudly in his ears and he can’t make out anything specific. Just low, lilting syllables.

Eventually, Yusuf finishes his routine. The sun rises slowly behind him, tinting the world golden. Nicolo doesn’t move; the cold has seeped so deeply into his bones that he is afraid they may crack.

“Nicolo, wake up,” Yusuf says. He’s struggling with the remains of last night’s campfire — he hadn’t pulled the logs out far enough and they continued to smoulder deep into the night, leaving crisp charcoal lumps. Nicolo watches him fail with sick satisfaction for a moment longer before uncoiling himself, the movement serpentine and slick, with the exception of the way his body groans.

God, he’s cold.

Silently, he approaches the makeshift hearth. Yusuf doesn’t move away; rather, he looks at Nicolo with something approaching contempt in his dark eyes, muttering something musical and incomprehensible. Nicolo gestures to the fire, and reluctantly Yusuf backs away.

Finally, Nicolo loosens his grip on his longsword. He pulls a short dagger from his boot and begins scavenging through the ashes. First, he removes the charcoal, placing it beside his longsword. He then begins to whittle away at some of the half-burned pieces, cleaving darkness away from light and relishing the way the wood gives under his blade, splintering into needles and sharp dust. 

The pile of wood he reclaims is small but respectable. Yusuf comments something that Nicolo doesn’t understand as he moves to light it. The flame won’t last long, but it will be bright. 

Yusuf strikes stone against steel and the delicate arrangement of sticks are engulfed instantly. The fire hums as Yusuf warms his hands. Nicolo stares into the hottest part of the flame and remembers how the fire had felt as it licked at his body.

The burning logs collapse onto themselves, and the fire blinks out.

Yusuf and Nicolo begin to walk.

It goes like this for months. Yusuf leads, choosing which path to take and which cities to enter, while Nicolo trails behind like something half-feral. Yusuf gathers firewood and Nicolo arranges the tinder. Yusuf lights the fire and Nicolo douses it. They hunt together, too: hares and deer and, on one very memorable and equally accidental occasion, a wolf. They kill each other, though it happens with decreasing frequency. 

Sometimes, they even talk.

Yusuf wakes with a start one night after an oddly realistic dream, coming face-to-face with Nicolo. He looks even paler than usual. The weather is growing steadily hotter as they travel south, but the nights are getting more and more brutal as they leave the temperate coast behind.

(Nicolo was supposed to leave him there to travel north, across Anatolia and through Greece, but Nicolo had barely spared a look at the great, rolling sea. Yusuf had told himself that it didn’t matter. Nicolo had probably scouted the docks and found no one willing to take him home. They would travel together for a time, but Nicolo would find some travelling merchant somewhere, and that would be it.)

Nicolo’s Greek is clipped. It is a sign of fatigue that Yusuf has begun to recognise in his travel companion.

“Something is wrong,” is what Nicolo gets out, stumbling over the words. He repeats the sentence twice more, just to emphasise his point, before backsliding into a litany of Latin. Crossing himself, he stands, wobbling, and lurches for his sword.

Yusuf, still mostly asleep, says, “I dreamed of women.”

Nicolo drops his sword, nearly slicing his toes off. Yusuf, still shaking the sleep out of his head, doesn’t notice.

“Two mighty warriors,” Yusuf continues, dream-stricken. Nicolo watches him in horror. “Eternal and unending, wise beyond comparison.”

Nicolo lurches away and heaves into the nearest bush.

Yusuf finally notices.

“Nicolo? Are you sick?”

“Yes,” Nicolo says, pulling himself up, vomit sticking to his clothes. He smells of illness and grief, of true desperation. He fumbles with shaky hands for something on the sand. There’s a flash of steel. Yusuf watches, unable to bite back a scream, as Nicolo runs himself through with his own sword.

Yusuf runs to him, suddenly very much awake. He holds him for the first time since Jerusalem. Nicolo tries to bat him away, but his arms have no strength. Yusuf swears at him, a mixture of Greek, Arabic, and Genoese vulgarities that he’s picked up from Nicolo over the months. 

Nicolo’s blue eyes glaze. 

Time stops.

After an agonizing moment, Nicolo’s wound stops weeping. Yusuf grabs the hilt and pulls the sword out of Nicolo’s body, sickened by the sight of insides spilling out, bright against the ground. A heaving breath, and Nicolo is alive again.

Apparently, this is an injustice that Nicolo cannot let stand. No sooner is there breath in his lungs than he is scrabbling at his boot, fingers slipping over his own gore. This time, Yusuf sees the intention in Nicolo’s eyes, the mad fanaticism that grips him and refuses to let him go. Unfortunately, Yusuf notices half a second too late, and Nicolo buries the dagger straight into his own throat.

Yusuf covers his ears so he doesn’t have to hear Nicolo choking on his own blood.

While Nicolo is dead, Yusuf searches his blood-soaked clothes for weapons. He confiscates the dripping dagger and longsword, as well as a few smaller knives hidden on his person.

Nicolo wakes for a second time. The panic in his eyes has dimmed, but Yusuf can still see the shadows of it in the corners of Nicolo’s eyes.

“Are you done killing yourself?”

Yusuf surprises himself with how much concern he manages to shove into the words. He is still basically crading Nicolo, but the other man has made no move to push him away yet, so Yusuf focuses on remaining perfectly stone-still as Nicolo spasms beside him, clutching at his arm.

“A glorious battle,” Nicolo responds, still gasping for breath. Yusuf feels his fear through the places their bodies are mashed together. “A killer of gods.”

Yusuf tries to wrangle an explanation from Nicolo, but all he gets is a green, glassy stare.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where we're beginning the non-linear part of the narrative. Hang on tight!

They stop at cities often, to trade and barter and buy supplies.

“You must leave your armour,” Yusuf says, as they sit on the outskirts of a small trading town. They are barely two weeks from Jerusalem and they are in dire need of a restock. Yusuf had hoped to get further from the burnt city, but their pace is slow, impeded by the fact that they have taken to killing each other as a form of communication. 

Nicolo frowns at Yusuf and tightens his grip on the longsword at his hip. He swears in Genoese, bitter and biting.

Yusuf tries again. “You look like an invader in that.”

Nicolo just stares at him.

“They will not sell us anything. They will drag you to the center of town and kill you in front of everyone. Then they will kill me, because I am travelling with you and am therefore a traitor.”

There’s a short, loaded silence. Yusuf watches the thoughts swirling inside Nicolo’s head and can practically  _ hear  _ the ringing collisions as one thought crashes into another.

“My father gave me this armour,” Nicolo says, and his eyes slip out of focus.

Yusuf looks at the armour incredulously. Granted, it is much more durable than Yusuf’s boiled leather, but it’s stiff and impersonal. Not to mention dented and charred; it’s definitely taken a beating. He’s yet to see Nicolo shed it entirely, which is absolutely baffling, because Yusuf knows that it’s uncomfortable after long periods of time, especially while sleeping. He can see it in the way Nicolo pulls himself to his feet after a night spent on the hard ground and read it in the sore lines of his body and the slight grimace on his face.

His father, though, is a new topic. Nicolo has never spoken about home or family, or anything that could be classified as  _ before.  _ Before Yusuf, before Jerusalem, before war and death and pain.

Nicolo’s eyes, though. He was standing in front of Yusuf, and then suddenly he’s gone, lost in memory and thought.

Just as suddenly, he’s back.

“I will not leave it,” Nicolo says, snapping back to the present. Yusuf opens his mouth to argue, but finds that the words turn to dust before they can even form.

Yusuf gives him a cloak. If he drapes it over his armour and wears a headwrap, maybe they can get away with it. 

Really, Yusuf should just go himself. But there’s an angry part of him that wants Nicolo to see what his stupid war has done to the people of this town — the people of every town — how the blood spilled has stained the innocent.

The town is desperate. Yusuf can feel how it aches; the children are slow and ashen, the women are silent, and the men — the few of them that are left — slink around in the shadows, cowardly and ashamed.

Nicolo is trailing behind him, as per usual. If he focuses, Yusuf can just barely pick out the rasp of Nicolo’s plates rubbing against each other. The mail, thankfully, is muffled by the cloak, and there’s none of the cheerful, musical tinkling that usually accompanies Nicolo’s gait.

Curiosity gets the better of Yusuf, and he turns. He locks eyes with Nicolo — the only part of Nicolo’s face that’s bare — and sees only an icy disinterest. It sends chills down his spine. Yusuf quickly tears his gaze away.

He tries really hard to focus on the markets and the traders, and he does a pretty good job of it. But he can’t force that iciness out of his brain.

“Your friend doesn’t speak much, does he?” a merchant asks Yusuf, eyes twinkling. They’ve been talking for at least half an hour, haggling and swapping stories of their homes. Nicolo is standing a few paces behind, scanning the market with his impassive gaze. Yusuf tries not to show how much it’s bothering him, though he’s not sure exactly why it’s making him uncomfortable.

“I’ve gotten used to it,” Yusuf replies, running his hands over a smooth tunic. He needs new clothes badly; his current ones have suffered greatly through many deaths. Nicolo is worse off, if that’s even possible. 

“He must not be a very exciting travel companion.”

Yusuf remembers the scorching fire, the pain of decapitation, the blinding anger eclipsed only by his own exhaustion. “He keeps me on my toes.”

The merchant laughs. “A prankster, then!”

“Perhaps,” Yusuf says, fighting a wry smile. He tries to imagine Nicolo pasting coins to the cobblestones to fool unsuspecting passers-by, or slipping a small creature into Yusuf’s boot. It’s an upsetting image. 

Yusuf is just glad that Nicolo doesn’t understand the language.

Yusuf banters back and forth with the merchant for a few more minutes before they finally settle on a price for some new clothes. It’s cheaper than Yusuf had expected, but still more than he had wanted to pay. These tunics are the new style, brought from one of the larger cities, and are brightly coloured with embroidered cuffs. Yusuf would’ve normally looked for something else, something a bit more sensible, but he gets the sense that the flashiness will piss Nicolo off and Yusuf can’t resist that. It’s petty and he’s better than that… only he’s really, really not.

It’s late when they leave the town. Yusuf deliberately takes his sweet, sweet time, making sure to walk throughout the entire town. He’s determined to make Nicolo feel guilty for his sins.

But Nicolo is quiet the whole walk.

It’s not until they reach their campsite that Yusuf cracks.

“Do you not feel for how they are suffering?”

Nicolo sheds the cloak and passes it back to Yusuf, profoundly unbothered. He collapses to the ground with a clank. “No.”

“And you call yourself a holy man?”

There’s a hiss of steel, and Yusuf is staring at the point of Nicolo’s longsword. He follows the blade all the way to the hilt to stare at Nicolo again. Oddly enough, apart from the idle threat on Yusuf’s life, Nicolo doesn’t seem mad, not really. If anything, there’s a sort of detached sadness in his eyes and resignation in the set of his jaw. Yusuf finds his own anger waning, though he tries hard to maintain a scowl, for appearances if nothing else.

Nicolo doesn’t say anything for a moment, continuing to stare at Yusuf with that blank look. After a very long silence, he lowers his longsword and says, “I cannot carry the world’s suffering inside me, Yusuf.”

It’s enraging, the way Nicolo says it, flat and factual. He’s right, too, which makes Yusuf want to stab him in the throat. Again.

So Yusuf does. It’s not very satisfying. Nicolo doesn’t fight back, but whether that’s due to shock or resignation or a hidden guilt is impossible to determine.

It takes Nicolo longer than usual to wake. That’s probably because Yusuf’s knife went deep into the top of his spine. Yusuf had felt the crack through the hilt of his knife. 

There’s a gasp, and Nicolo wakes, drenched. He looks at Yusuf with an unreadable expression.

They build the fire in silence. Yusuf tosses his ruined clothes into the flames and watches them burn, without even moving out of the smoke. Across the fire, Nicolo sheds his armour onto the sand piece by piece with a faraway look. Yusuf watches with a simmering anger as Nicolo scrubs and cleans the metal pieces. Though Nicolo is drenched in blood and gore, he makes no move to clean the still-wet blood from his face and neck until his armour shines.

Neither of them speak.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s not a big dramatic thing, when Nicolo and Yusuf part. At least, that’s what Nicolo tries to tell himself. In reality, every part of his body screams when Yusuf turns away, that breaks as Yusuf’s soft footsteps fade.

“We are not meant to be alone,” Yusuf had said before. But that was a long time ago — they have lived many lives and died many deaths since that one, poignant moment.

It has taken them months to make it to Cairo. Even now, Nicolo hasn’t made it there. Instead, he stands on a small hill, looking at the city, watching Yusuf as he’s swallowed up into the mass of people and colour. 

Yusuf is home.

Nicolo sits on the hill and cries.

Later, he goes into the city. He barters clumsily with a man leading a caravan to Alexandria. Nicolo knows he’s negotiated badly, but can’t bring himself to care; if he runs out of money, he’ll just… acquire some more, or strike out on his own. He should feel unstoppable, unbreakable, but instead he just feels tired.

He’s glad to leave Cairo. He’s glad to be going home.

The nightmares try to convince him otherwise.

They start innocently enough. Nicolo is looking out over a large, glassy lake, or at a glowing sunset, or up at the stars. He feels content, feels safe, and turns to tell someone — tell Yusuf — when he comes face-to-face with the Devil. The Devil will smile at him and comment on the scenery. The Devil will show him sin, and laugh at Nicolo when he flinches away, or falls to his knees, or screams in anguish. Nicolo’s prayers and pleas do nothing to end the nightly torment. He buys herbs and powders and potions, but those only serve to give the Damned thing horns or paint it in bright colours.

The night before the caravan leaves, Nicolo has an odd dream. It’s a nightmare, really, but it doesn’t feel like the previous ones.

Nicolo sits in an old vineyard. The air tastes sickly sweet, overripe.

“They have split ways,” a voice says, dancing on the air and mingling with the smell of wine. Turning, Nicolo sees a pair of women pressed up against each other, seated on a low brick wall.

(“The Devil has many faces!” Father Cibo shouts, pounding the pulpit and showering spit over the gathered congregation. “You must never allow yourself to be fooled, for even a moment, for the Devil will grab hold! And once the Devil has your soul,” he says, his voice lowering imperceptibly as he glares at Nicolo, “you are no longer worthy before God. He will not claim you! The Devil will drag you to Hell, and you will deserve all the suffering that is inflicted on you.”

Of all the things he remembers from that sermon, Nicolo recalls the heat. Sweat rolled off him in waves, and he wondered vaguely if Hell was going to be anything like this.)

“Shit. Of course,” one of the women laments, removing her hand from where it rests on her companion’s knee in order to drag it tiredly across her face.   
Her companion pats her arm sympathetically. “Who do you want to hunt down first?” she asks.

An icy chill settles into Nicolo’s bones. They are coming for him. They are coming, and he has to run. If he puts enough distance between him and Yusuf, if he gets far enough away from wherever these women are, they might decide to go after Yusuf instead. And maybe, Yusuf and the women will kill each other, for real, and then Nicolo will never have to worry about any of it ever again.

The women laugh, and Nicolo wakes with a scream in his throat.

In the morning, the caravan leaves. Nicolo rents a camel from the caravanner, one he’s surprisingly fond of. Her name is Kepi, and she’s surly and steady. She doesn’t like him. Nicolo respects that.

A week later, he’s in Alexandria. 

He says goodbye to Kepi. She stares at him lazily, unaffected. It’s comforting.

Once he’s in Alexandria, though, everything starts to fall apart. He doesn’t have any money left, and he’s still too close to Yusuf — he can practically feel the two women breathing down his neck. They’re gaining on him.

Nicolo stumbles his way into a couple games of backgammon, and manages to turn the pile of small copper coins into a larger stack. Water into wine. 

He spends a couple days in Alexandria, doing odd jobs and gambling and breaking noses. After all that, he’s got enough for a trip to Athens on a shitty trading boat. 

On the boat, though, Nicolo finally feels calm. The women can’t get him when he’s floating, untethered, across the Mediterranian. It’s not a nice boat, nothing like the warships he came in, and he spends the entire journey struggling with seasickness, but he still finds himself sad when his feet finally hit solid ground.

Athens is beautiful, he realises. He realises that Antioch was beautiful, and Jerusalem was beautiful, and Cairo, and Alexandria. Nicolo feels a deep regret for not noticing before.

Nicolo is out of money again, so he finds a corner of the city to hunker down in. As the night approaches, the sky clouds, and soon Nicolo finds himself in the midst of a thunderstorm. He falls asleep under an abandoned vendor’s cart, relatively dry, because the upturned cart is surprisingly sturdy.

Incidentally, the cart is what saves him.

In his dream, he watches a boat come into the port and dock beside the merchant boats. Nicolo watches, horrified, as the women step off their boat and walk into Athens.

They found him.

They are coming to kill him.

“Where is he?” the woman in red asks, scanning the docks. “I saw him here.”

Nicolo watches as she retraces his steps — the market, the tavern — before coming to a stop in front of a nearby inn. 

“He must be here,” she says. “This is the cheapest place close to the docks.”

Nicolo’s suddenly very cold. He’s in the alley behind the inn. If he was awake, he could probably hear them talking in real life. 

He cannot let that happen.

The dream continues, but Nicolo forces it out of him with a frightening determination. He wakes, gasping, nearly smashing his head in on the cart. He has to act fast; the women are clever and efficient, and can see him while they sleep.

Nicolo drags himself out from under the cart. He flips it over as quickly as he can, trying desperately not to drop it onto the cobblestones. The rain is still coming down in sheets, and the wood is slippery in his hands.

Finally, the cart is upright. He takes off towards the market, pushing it in front of him with urgency.

The inn has two stories. Should be about ten rooms, then. Assuming the innkeeper lets them check the rooms — or they convince him — and they average five minutes per room (per occupant, really), that buys him just under an hour until they come looking. Of course, that’s assuming all the rooms are filled. If there’s an empty room, the women might just settle in for the night and use the dreams for guidance.

He makes it to the market terribly out of breath. There’s no one there, which is disappointing, but a few of the lazier ones have left their wares tucked under their stalls, out of sight. Nicolo robs one such clothing merchant absolutely blind, changing his well-traveled tunic out for a new one, and adds a cloak for good measure. He finds a pair of smoked glasses and jams those on his face, too. Why not? It’s the panic talking, but he doesn’t have the energy to tamp it down.

At another stall, he finds melons. Perfect. Those go in the cart. Cart loaded, he puts his back to the docks and runs. Hopefully he can put enough distance between him and the women to buy him another day of travel.

Nicolo’s hour is almost up. He breaks into a church. It’s not Catholic, so he doesn’t feel too bad about hauling the cart in behind him. He slides himself under a pew, his nose inches from the polished wood. He can’t see anything but the dark wood, which is great, because that means the women probably won’t, either. He just needs to stay exactly like this until the sun begins to rise, and then he can make one mad dash north, out of the city.

The sun rises. Nicolo tears out of the church, a man possessed. He convinces — threatens, really — a baffled man to trade him a swift horse for the cart of melons, and he points the mare straight north and kicks her into a gallop.

Nicolo doesn’t run her to death, but it’s a close thing. In the next city, he trades her for another horse. Rinse, repeat.

The dreams subside. The women stop pounding at the edges of his mind.

Nicolo is finally safe.


	5. Chapter 5

The new clothes that Yusuf bought for Nicolo are getting no use. Nicolo refuses to wear them because apparently they are “too clean.” 

Pure bullshit.

It really is a shame, too, because Nicolo is, objectively, disgusting. He’s covered in all kinds of blood, dirt, not to mention sweat. Just because Nicolo doesn’t voice his complaints doesn’t mean Yusuf can’t tell how much the weather is getting to him. A man can’t wear full armour and maintain proper airflow.

Eventually, Yusuf has had enough. He changes course from Cairo and detours directly into a river. It’s not the cleanest river — it doesn’t sparkle in the sun — but Yusuf is so glad to see it. He practically rips his new clothes off and throws himself into the water, feeling it wash away the hurt he’s accumulated on his travels.

Yusuf washes and thinks. He thinks of his mother in Cairo, wonders if she has received word of Jerusalem’s fall. Wonders if she mourns him.

That makes him turn to look at Nicolo, perched on the bank of the river. His back is to Yusuf, which is surprising in itself. A well-placed crossbow bolt would kill him instantly, and Nicolo knows this.

More surprising, arguably, is the way he’s standing. Yusuf saw it once before, moments before slitting his throat at the fountain in Jerusalem. Yusuf sees it in the set of Nicolo’s shoulders, the placement of his feet, the slightly bent knees. He’s perfectly still, and could probably stay this way for hours.

Nicolo is standing on guard.

This realization sends Yusuf’s mind spinning. He has to dunk his head under the cool water a few times to get his thoughts ordered again.

He looks back at Nicolo. As expected, he hasn’t moved an inch, battered armour gleaming in the sun.

Fuck, okay.

Yusuf resists the urge to scream and instead focuses on what he knows.

One. Nicolo has killed many of Yusuf’s people.

That helps, sort of. But it also reminds Yusuf that he left the smoking carcass of Jerusalem. He could have stayed, could have tried to help…

Damn, okay.

Two. Yusuf is going home.

Yusuf thinks of his mother again, this time in warmer tones. If she is grieving him, she will have to grieve no longer. If she is angry at him, then he will simply say that he is angry, too, and they will leave it at that.

Three. Nicolo is going home.

Nicolo is going to fuck off back to his own land, and Yusuf will be happy to see him go. At least he’s managed to send one invader packing.

Yusuf shakes the water out of his hair and feels infinitely better about life. He sloshes out of the river into the sun’s warm embrace. The water quickly leaves his skin, leaving ghostly tracks running down his legs and pooling into the sand under him. 

Once he’s dry, Yusuf dresses himself. He makes his way to the top of the bank where Nicolo stands at attention. He doesn’t so much as sway in the breeze.

“You should wash,” Yusuf says, sidling up beside him.

Nicolo doesn’t quite start, but his stance does shift. His gaze, however, keeps sweeping the horizon.

“If you are finished, then we should press on.”

Yusuf resists the urge to smack him. “You need to wash,” he rephrases, letting his frustration harden his voice.

Nicolo opens his mouth to argue. Yusuf shuts him down immediately.

“You reek of death. I will not walk another step with you smelling like this.”

Nicolo shuts his mouth with a snap, his eyes hard. He snarls out some unkind foreign words that Yusuf has come to recognize as bitter profanity. Yusuf watches, smug, as Nicolo retreats downwards towards the water.

It doesn’t occur to him to look away.

Yusuf watches as Nicolo sheds his armour piece by piece, setting each metal section gently on the sandy ground. There’s a certain cadence to it, like he’s reciting the words to a well-loved poem. There’s a stutter towards the end, as Nicolo reaches up, fingers brushing against his fine hair and realizes his helmet is absent. It has been ever since Yusuf hit him particularly hard upside the head and the metal — already pretty warped — gave out completely and made the whole thing more of a hindrance than anything else.

The clothes underneath the armour are very nearly falling apart. The fabric is slashed and worn, fraying from where the armour pinches and rubs at it. Yusuf can hardly stand to look at it; the fabric all but disintegrates in Nicolo’s hands.

Once the clothes are gone, it amazes Yusuf how brilliantly Nicolo shines in the sun. He glitters, blinding white, a beacon against the dark water. Yusuf tries to find an apt comparison for the light that emanates from him, but finds all description falls flat; in this moment, Nicolo is incomparable, incomprehensible. There are no words for how the water kisses his face, caresses his chest, grasps and tugs at his soaked hair with all the ferocity of a jealous lover. As Yusuf watches, he feels like maybe he is drowning, or maybe he’s dead, because what he sees before him is simply nothing that makes any sense in this world. Nicolo cannot command the water, and yet the water worships him regardless, unable to resist the temptation to press ever closer, to stroke and brush and pull.

Nicolo turns, just a bit, and Yusuf sees the wide expanse of his back. Yusuf is expecting more of the same — a silver shine that is too bright to be real. Instead, Nicolo’s back is a shattered mirror, a storming sea; Yusuf finds himself reaching out to trace the thin lines, and the world snaps into focus.

The water cradles Nicolo because he is broken.

The revelation comes crashing down around Yusuf’s ears, accompanied by a cacophony of noise. Ringing starts up, blacking out the corners of his vision. He should not have seen this. It is a breach of trust that Nicolo will find insurmountable.

Yusuf wheels around and tries to steady his breath.

He has heard stories, of course, of the cruelty of the Franks. He’s seen it, to an extent, during the battle. The blazing fury in Nicolo’s eyes, framed in the visor of his helmet, is not a sight that will leave him quickly. Neither is the ice that forms occasionally, frosting over Nicolo’s eyes in a sight that is somehow horrific.

But this? To one of their own?

Yusuf feels the ground churning underfoot. If this is what they do to each other, then there is no telling the horrors that they will inflict on those they capture.


	6. Chapter 6

The water is nice. It’s not like the coast, but Nicolo likes the way it feels against him anyway. In the feeling of semi-weightlessness, there is a comfort unlike what he’s experienced in the past months. Years, maybe.

Nicolo sinks into the darkness and lets the water take him. When he surfaces, it’s with a clarity that he hasn’t had in a very long time.

Jerusalem had been a mistake.

Many had died. Innocents. And for what? For who? A silent, spiteful God?

Nicolo will have no further part in that. God will punish him, undoubtedly, but Nicolo is already damned. He is already an abomination, a walking horror that will not die.

When Nicolo emerges from the river, he can feel the stain of his sins leech into the water, swirling and churning downstream to pollute others.

Dripping, he approaches his armour. A sad heap of scrap, now. Nicolo spares a moment of stillness as he gazes on it, his rusted pile of failed potential. He thinks of his father, of what his father had wanted from him, demanded of him. Nicolo thinks of the look on his mother’s face as his father had presented the armour to him. It wasn’t pride.

Nicolo kicks sand over the metal. The rough grains stick to his feet and calves, and it dawns on him that he’ll have to wash again. 

It doesn’t matter.

He buries the armour — the Crusader — and rises from river reborn.


End file.
